Book Alert / John Donne -- The Reformed Soul, A Biography

John Donne -- The Reformed Soul, A Biography by John Stubbs, Norton '07, $35, 565 pages, ISBN #0393062600. Index, further reading, source notes, unillustrated.

Polymaths always seem to evoke curiosity among the less gifted. How is it possible to sustain an intellectual focus in two or more unrelated areas? And, perhaps most fascinatingly, how does expertise in one field of study come to inform another?

British poet John Donne came from a long line of Jesuit missionaries, and it would have been natural for him to move to the fore of preserving the Roman Church from the onslaught of Queen Elizabeth's Protestantism.  But seeing up close the carnage wrought by religious conflict made Donne wonder if all that was really worth the candle. Wasn't it possible to find in the divine presence a God whose umbrella could encompass everyone?

Donne's rise to prominence was hardly conventional. He gave up career and social standing by marrying early and becoming a buccaneer. How unlikely it seemed to some that such a man would ever end up as the Dean of St. Paul's in London? But his diverse life experiences enriched his art there as an English poet whose work continued to encompass his spiritual devotion. This is the first work for author John Stubbs, who was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge.